Trump’s televised address was reportedly written by aide Stephen Miller, known for his hardline immigration views. On the same day as President Donald Trump’s televised Oval Office address – in which he stoked racial resentment of immigrants, using fear as a motivator to rally support for the construction of a $5.7 billion “wall” along the U.S.-Mexico border – presidential historian Jon Meacham suggested a link between the rhetoric used by the commander-in-chief to a powerful member of the Ku Klux Klan from decades ago. “America should ‘build a wall of steel, a wall as High as Heaven,’ against the flow of immigrants,” Meacham wrote on Twitter Wednesday night, citing former Georgia Gov. Clifford Walker’s words at a 1924 convention of the KKK. (…) “From my sources — my good Republican sources — they’re telling me that the president’s favorite immigration guru, Steve Miller, is writing the speech,” Ryan told CNN host Don Lemon. During his prime time address, Trump wrongly claimed, “At the request of Democrats, it will be a steel barrier rather than a concrete wall.” The Democrats, in fact, did not request to construct a steel barrier along the southern border. Democrats have long been vehemently opposed to the idea of building a wall between the U.S. and Mexico. In fact, Democrats have opposed the construction of any steel or concrete barrier along the Southern border. CNN noted they have “only kept the door open to funding a border barrier as part of a broader immigration deal.”

In 1924, Georgia Gov. Clifford Walker told the audience at the Ku Klux Klan convention that the US should "build a wall of steel, a wall as High as Heaven" to keep immigrants out. Pres. Trump repeated that sentiment during his primetime address on Tuesday. https://t.co/oi6V95dTM8